The Post Script

As the Jambanja team made its way straight back to Harare, we opted for the scenic route, taking in Fish River canyon, some of the Kalahari, the Magkadikadi Pans and the Matopos Hills in Zim. Africa has a way of thwarting even the best laid plans, and we were unlucky to discover that the Magkadikadi pans had had a freak rainstorm the previous week, leaving them underwater and completely impassable. Fortunately we were wise enough to turn back at the first sign of mud, rather than press on (a sure sign that I'm getting old, as I'd definitely have pressed on in my youth!). Lucky we did, as it turned out the only vehicles in the pans were three very stuck South African vehicles who had ignored all the warnings and carried on. Last we heard they'd been digging for 48 hours and hadn't moved.....

We were chased throughout by a very cold front that left our car ice-encrusted several times in the Kalahari. It didn't diminish our fun in any way, but it did mean we were less inclined to hang around than we might otherwise have been. Perhaps a divine sign that we do all need now to get back to reality?!

The return to Zim could have been an anti-climax but, thankfully, wasn't. We had our last night out at a bush camp in the stunning Matopos hills, completely on our own. Huddled round the fire, we played quiz games on our trip (e.g. "in what Egyptian town did we see a seafood restaurant whose menu included the tantalising offerings of Fresh Crap and Muck?"), wink murder (a classic game with a seven year old who can only wink by manually holding one eye open while blinking) and a review of our best and worst meals over the last six months (in which my meals appeared with monotonous regularity in the latter category!). It was an entirely fitting final night, and on Wednesday 1st July we drove back from Matopos to Harare, reaching home at 5pm for a joyful reunion with our friends, our pets and, in some cases, our bicycles. Oh the joy of young boys who haven't had their bikes for six whole months!

A few photos of highlights along the way:

Camping at the bizarrely-named Titties Bay on the west coast of South Africa. It was here we met the woman whose dad was the lighthouse keeper.

Staring down at the impressive but fearsomely chilly Fish River canyon in Namibia. Who needs school when you can get living geography lessons like this one?

Revisiting a favourite camp on the Botswana side of the Kalagadi Transfrontier park. As always, we had fabulous sightings of lion here, and woke up in the morning to find them all around our camp.

Green's Baobab, on the edge of the Makgadigadi Pans. Sadly we couldn't get any further into the pans, due to the heavy rains they'd had the previous week.

A close encounter with an ardvaark just outside Gweta. Botswana is like Texas. Everything here is unnaturally large!

Sundowners on our final evening at Matopos in Zim. We had the whole camp to ourselves for less money than it costs just to get one person into a national park in Botswana!

Home at last for joyful reunions with friends, pets and bicycles.

Some of our pets have grown quite a bit while we've been gone.....

As, indeed, have some of us!

And now we do indeed return to reality. I write this in the early morning from home before my first day back at work, and Jake has already donned his uniform, boarded a flight and gone back to his school in South Africa. Already, after a few days at home, the trip is beginning to fade into memory as what seems like little more than a very long weekend away, but there are many subtle ways in which we're all permanently and irrevocably changed. I might have a chance later this week to reflect on some of those. But there again, I might not!

So, for the time being, I guess "That's All Folks". This blogging lark has been an adventure!

The Penguins, At Last

It was our stated objective to see the penguins in Cape Town. Admittedly, not the sole objective of the expedition, but nevertheless an important one. And we duly did, at Boulders Beach near Simonstown. And very weird it was too, to be walking around on a beach in shorts and bare feet looking at penguins, given that the last time I personally saw penguins was in minus something degrees in the Antarctic! Mission accomplished, though, and deeply satisfying it was, too.



Naturally we had to make the pilgrimage to Cape Point and its famous lighthouse. We subsequently met a woman whose father had been its keeper for many years and who had grown up there, which was a fantastic addition to the record of People We've Met With Unusual Parents (a category into which none of us fall, and certainly none of our children fall!).

Our friends Lucy and Loki in Cape Town very kindly organised a welcoming party for the team, both to celebrate our arrival and to mark the 7th and 16th birthdays of Little Max and big Max respectively. Here, Little Max stares in satisfied wonder at the two enormous birthday cakes cleverly organised by Lucy.

Speeches were made, toasts were offered and a good time was had by all. Amazing how many friends we now have in Cape Town, all of whom were Zimbos once. An additional surprise guest was Phoenella Powles, whose former house on the slopes of Mt Elgon we had visited in Kenya. Touchingly, she had fond memories of my grandmother that were almost too much to hear...!

And then, suddenly, it was all over. We took leave of the others in Jambanja, who had to drive back to Zim immediately, and found we were suddenly and deafeningly On Our Own. Gosh, what a weird feeling that was!

And so now we too will make our way homeward, though taking a slightly lengthier route. Our plan is to come up via Fish River canyon in Namibia, then through the Kalahari in Botswana, and get home for early July when Jake goes back to school and I go back to work. Not long now...

Cape Town

Hi all

 

Well, with no small sense of achievement we reached Cape Town on Friday 12^th June. The objective of the trip was Cape via Cairo, and we did it! I can’t pretend we’re not a little sad that our gloriously happy time-out from life has drawn to an end, but we knew it couldn’t go on for ever. And yesterday (Saturday) we had a fabulous celebratory party with various assembled friends, hosted by Lucy and Loki, and the reality begun slowly to sink in. Against the odds, we took six months off, with our kids, and drove 33,000 kms across Africa. We had no major accidents, no major illnesses and no major disasters, and we all enjoyed every single moment of it, to the maximum. In your wildest dreams, you couldn’t hope for more than that! We also did something that we’ve never done before (and may never do again, although I REALLY hope we do!!). We spent six whole months solidly together as a family – all day, every day. In a way, that was more special than anything else. In the frenetic hurly-burly of our normal lives (in as much as our lives could ever have been described as “normal”!), we rarely spend an hour in each others’ company, let alone an entire day. To get the chance to spend six months together has been a real privilege, and none of us will ever be quite the same again.

 

Travelling with another family has added a further dimension to the trip, and it has been much the richer for it. Not only, on a very practical level, has it made it possible for us to go places we’d never dare go alone, but it has also created an additional set of social dynamics that have transformed the entire experience for everyone. The small boys have had friends to play with (and how they have played, turning the entire continent into one great big sandpit!), the big boys have had mates to share with, and the grown-ups have had other grown-ups with whom to laugh, cry and generally share the joys and the worries (such as they’ve been) along the way. We might have been able to do some of it without them, but we’ve done a lot more, and had a lot more fun, doing it with them.

 

Although the trip’s not technically over until we’re all back in Harare, it is now effectively over for Jangano as a team. The Harford-Adams family have a tighter deadline than us, and will drive straight back to Harare this week. We still have a couple more weeks ahead of us before we have to head home, and so we’ll amble up through Namibia and Botswana, winding gently down and preparing ourselves for the trauma of having to reintegrate ourselves into the world!

 

This isn’t the last from me, but it is a significant indicator that the end is nearly upon us…..

 

Gus

 

 

 

 

 

 

SA and Lesotho

And so, on the final leg, we pass from Mozambique (still very much real Africa) into the familiar yet enduringly surreal environment that is South Africa. And once again, especially after so many months in the rest of Africa, it is a shock. In Durban we went to the water slides at Ushaka Marine Park (fulfilling a promise I’d made to the boys way back in Uganda), and were stunned by the numbers of seriously overweight and unhealthy looking people we saw there (of all shades and hues). The aggressive consumerism that is the hallmark of so many western countries is glaringly apparent in South Africa too, and it really takes you aback when you haven’t been exposed to it for a while. We genuinely haven’t seen an obese person from Sudan to Mozambique. But the moment we get into South Africa, they’re everywhere! Scary stuff.

 

Not that South Africa isn’t a beautiful country because, of course, it is. From Durban we headed up the Sani Pass into Lesotho, a stunning drive through the Drakensburg. We nearly didn’t make it. I’d had Mahali’s joints greased in Durban and they garage had lubricated all the bushes with some kind of petroleum based lubricant designed to eliminate the squeaks (in itself a bizarre idea – I use the squeaks to tell me the car is still in one piece!). Unfortunately, the bushes in the panhard arm at the front were polyurethane, instead of rubber, and were completely dissolved by the lubricant. As this only became apparent doing 100kmh on the freeway near Pietermaritzburg, and as the result was a wheel shimmy of frightening violence, it was a somewhat unsettling experience.

 

Amazingly (and this is the counterbalancing joy of being in South Africa), there is a company in ‘Maritzburg (run, of course, by a sympathetic Zimbo) that manufacture polyurethane bushes, and we had new ones fitted and in place by 10am the next morning! Allowing us to make it up to Lesotho that same day. Sadly time didn’t allow us to traverse the country as we’d originally hoped, but the brutal fact was that we were ill-equipped to deal with the sub-zero temperatures we’d be encountering along the way anyway, so it was with some relief that we turned around and drove back down the Sani pass towards our next destination in Port Elizabeth.

 

PE is home to our great friends James and Colleen, and we took over their house and space for two wonderful nights in their company. The city itself may not be overly pre-possessing, but the neighbouring beaches are stunning, and we donned our fleeces for a bracing walk along Sardinia beach, where we encountered the biggest jelly fish we’d ever seen. PE is also home to Woodridge, Jake’s school. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t keen to visit it (school’s in session, and he’s missing it), so we passed reluctantly by (the rest of us being keen to go and have a look around).

 

From PE we drove down the Garden Route, overnighting in the national park at Wilderness (a less apt name for which would be hard to imagine, given that the N2 runs right through the park!), and then down to Cape Agulhas. This is the southernmost point in Africa and obviously a major landmark for us, marking the end of our southerly progress and the point at which we turned back north. We camped in a completely empty campsite right on the beach (it’s mid-winter in South Africa, and there’s nobody about in any of the tourist spots), and had a full fry-up breakfast right next to Cape itself. From there we had some emotional group photos together before we finally split up as a team, with Jambanja heading to one set of friends in Cape Town and us off to another.

 

 

 

Through the Great Lakes

Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve had a decent update. Apologies for that. As we’ve headed south, we’ve had to accelerate, with the result that we’ve spent more time travelling and have had less time available for writing.

Not that the additional travelling has in any way detracted from the fun. We’ve seen many fantastic places, and the To Do list of sites we’ll come back to one day with more time is growing and growing. From Rwanda we came down through Burundi, where we met the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika. Stunning scenery, surrounded the mountains of the eastern DRC on the one side and the no-less-impressive hills of Burundi on the other side.

Visiting a friend's orphanage in Bujumbura, with the DRC mountains in the background.

Thence into Tanzania and down the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika through Kigoma (definitely one of the most characterful towns in East Africa, with its little port, railhead and airport). We were able finally to tick off a long held personal ambition, which was to get to Katavi National Park (described by a friend who knows it well as the Best Game Park in Africa). We were not disappointed there, as we feasted our eyes on herds of buffalo, zebra and topi bigger than any we’d ever seen. Sadly, the prohibitive park entry fees prevented us from staying longer than one night, but even one night was a privilege.

Picknicking on the edge of a 450 sq km fllodplain in Katavi.

We’d hoped to go all the way down to Songea in south-western Tanzania and then to cross the Rovuma river into Mozambique. It turned out that the ferry at Mtwara had been sunk and river was too full for what the Michelin map describes enigmatically as “Crossing Par Pirogue”. So we chose the safe route through Malawi. And beautiful it was. Malawi’s a very familiar country to all of us (Nicky was even born there!), and we weren’t all that thrilled about going through it on this trip. But it remains a stunning destination, and we were all gently charmed by its friendly demeanour and glorious mountain backdrops.

Learning the secrets of woodcarving, Malawi-style

From Malawi we crossed into Mozambique and went back up north towards Lichinga, the highest town in Mozambique (at a dizzying 1400 metres above sea level!), and home to surely one of the continent’s strangest hotels. The chalets are built in the style of a railway signalman’s house (tall and thin, and serving no immediately recognisable function), while the piece de resistance in the garden is the shell of an old Mozambican airlines 737, some miles distant from the nearest airport.
Possibly the weirdest hotel in Africa (note the nose cone of 737 in the background!)

We’d also hoped to get into Niassa Game Reserve, but once again found we lacked the time to do it (another thing on to the To Do list), so we headed due east from Lichinga to Pemba (in part the finest and in part one of the worst roads of our entire trip!). Pemba was all too brief, through beautiful, and then we were down to Ilha da Mozambique, the little island off the coast that was once Mozambique’s capital, and many of whose buildings predate those of any other European constructions in the southern hemisphere (the church in the fort dating back to 1498 or so). We were utterly captivated by Ilha – it really is an incredible place, and were lucky enough to be staying in a friend’s beautfilly restored old house there.

One of several 500 year old buildings on Ilha - this one in better condition than most!

The stunning beach at Pomene - a clear contender for most beautiful beach in East Africa (albeit with some stiff competition!)

From Ilha we’ve driven 1500kms down to Inhambane, and we’re now girding our loins for the final assault on Cape Town, at which we’re expecting to arrive on or around 12th June. Horribly sad to think our trip is nearly at an end, but still plenty to see before we finally reach home. Yesterday we passed another landmark when we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, into the temperate zones of the extreme south of Africa!

Images of Uganda

The volcanoes of the Virunga Massif, from the Ugandan side. Home to the mountain gorillas.

Our last time crossing the equator. From here, it's south all the way...

What happens when you squeeze a 200m wide river into a 7m wide gorge. Murchison Falls.

More kigelia than I care to think about!

The team viewing chimps in the Bugongo forest.

The Pearl of Africa

Hi all

 

Well, we’re in Rwanda, after a fabulous ten day stint in Uganda (surely the world’s greenest country). While there, we saw the other source of the Nile (the one that comes from Lake Victoria, and the one that caused poor Speke to come to grief on the day he was due to debate with Burton), the Murchison Falls (where the Nile gets squeezed into a narrow gorge only 7 metres wide), Queen Elizabeth National Park (where I once briefly worked as a consultant for CARE) and the Mgahinga Gorilla Park on the border with Rwanda and Congo. We caught glimpses of the Ruwenzori mountains (that’s on next year’s list for a return visit), and spent some quality time amongst a group of chimpanzees in the Bugongo forest (which I found to be an unnervingly familiar experience, perhaps a reflection on the less-then-immaculate table manners of my own three boys!). Oh, and we re-crossed the equator for the final time on the trip, signifying the fact that we truly are, now, on the home straight. We also, by the way, saw unnervingly large quantities of kigelia fruit. But I’ll perhaps keep that a secret for the time being….

 

Rwanda is an entirely different experience. Also stunningly green and beautiful, and clearly a country very much on the up. But the omnipresent reminders of its recent dark days are pretty stark. They are also, for us in Zim, a cause of some rather grim relief. Whatever we’ve been through in the last decade, thank goodness it never came to this.

 

On the positive side, though (there are many positives about Rwanda, fortunately), we managed to get some extremely hard-to-come by gorilla permits, and a select few of our party will be going to see the gorillas tomorrow, back up on the Rwandan side of the Virunga Massif. Sadly I’m not one of them, having already seen the gorillas before (many years ago, it has to be said). But I’m still thrilled that they’ll get a chance to do so. It’s an opportunity that simply can’t be missed.

 

From here our route is uncertain. We were planning to go down Lake Tanganyika and then over to Mtwara, hoping to cross the Rovuma into northern Mozambique. However, latest word is that the Rovuma ferry is now languishing at the bottom of the Rovuma river, and the only way across is by paying several enterprising villagers fairly substantial sums to lash their pirogues together and load the vehicle on top. This appeals to me enormously, but we’ve also heard that the river is in full spate at the moment and therefore not crossable. As it’s a very long way to travel to find out that we can’t cross the river, we may end up finding an alternative route down through Malawi. Ahh, the hazards of African travel. I love it!

 

More soon……

 

Gus

 

 

 

 

Homage to the ancestors

Hi all

From Western Kenya, where I’ve been indulging in a spot of traditional ancestor worship, visiting some of the spots my ancestors frequented and marvelling, once again, at the feats they achieved.

The first ancestor due for some respect is my Mum. We visited the Kaplong mission hospital where she laboured for the best part of 48 hours to produce me (during which time she endured a minor earth tremor and a slightly alarming one-on-one visitation from the local village looney). Then it was but a small mission outpost in rural Africa, conveniently situated to provide succour to the massed labour forces of the tea estates around Sotik. Today it is a sizeable hospital serving hundreds of thousands of people. Even so, I think it would take considerable courage to book into their labour ward today, and I can only imagine how much courage that required 42 years ago! Respect, Mum!

Sadly, in the torrential afternoon rains that have become a feature of our lives since coming to Western Kenya, we didn’t have the time to find the Ngoina Estate near Sotik where my father was working at the time I was born. But we did manage to find a car very similar to the one he used to drive around in. He called it the Ngoina Ferrari. At 850cc, it may well be the smallest car ever built. Certainly the smallest car he’s ever driven. This specimen was found in the garden of a small lodge next to the Tea Hotel in Kericho, and seemed a suitable substitute. The kids loved it, too. So here’s to you, Dad!

From Kericho through Kisumu and Kakamega (where my grandfather once joined a swarm of other impecunious settler farmers in a largely pointless and unproductive goldrush) and on to Kitale. Kitale was the main town market town for my grandparents and retains a faded colonial charm lost in most of Kenya. It is also home to the Kitale Club, where my folks had their wedding reception and from which several of the photos on our mantelpiece at home were taken.

Amazingly, the Kitale Club has enjoyed a revival in recent years and is in immaculate form, complete with golf course, swimming pool and several rentable cottages. We stood on the front step for a mandatory photo, and then poked around inside. Although I obviously wasn’t there when my folks were married, I doubt it has changed much since then. All the photos on the wall date from the 1930s, and even the billiard balls in the billiards room are probably the same ones that were used after dinner at the club in fifty years ago.

We had an amazing piece of luck while there. I spotted a mzungu and approached him to ask if he knew the only contact I had in the area and, naturally, it was he. Tony Mills, one of the last white farmers in the Trans-Nzoia, who still has fond memories of my grandmother from when he was a child, and who instantly invited us all to come and stay at his farm. What a luck!

And so, on the next morning, armed with a 1950s map of the district (at which time there were 950 white farmers, now down to three!), we went on the ultimate pilgrimage, in search of Kimwondo, the farm my grandparents built from scratch on the slopes of Mt Elgon, and the farm on which my Dad was born and raised.

We found it. Definitely not in the same state it was when my grandparents left it in 1969, but very definitely still standing ( a minor miracle, given that it was built from timber nearly 80 years ago!).

As we climbed up the hill, the first thing we found was a sizeable collection of shops built around Mr Patel’s original Duka (which I think was this one below).

After that, the primary school my grandparents built, and then a secondary school that has since grown on the same site.

And then finally, against a backdrop of cleared fields and cultivation (where once there was forest), the original house itself, still standing and home to the Kiboi family, who have vague and largely unrealistic plans to turn it into a tourist attraction of some sort.

It was, of course, an emotional moment, seeing this farm that has been so much a part of my life, but on which I’d never actually previously set eyes. Although it seems hard to imagine now how remote it was then, the scale of their achievement in developing this small piece of Africa from nothing is still evident. I’ve never doubted that they were true pioneers, but it brought it all home for me, and I left with a strong sense of responsibility to continue the tradition.

And here ends the self-indulgent ancestor worship. We’ve loved every moment of it, and the whole experience has been much enhanced by the commentary (not to mention the extraordinary hospitality) of Tony and his wife Adrienne, who still farm the Trans-Nzoia without electricity, drawing water from a river and knowing every single one of their several hundred dairy cows by name!

Today we leave for Uganda, and tomorrow we will visit the source of the White Nile at Jinja.

More soon!

Reunion in the bush

This one may well qualify as my most remote blog entry of the trip. It comes from an archaeological research station on the shores of Lake Turkana, right on the Kenya / Ethiopia border, and is about as "out there" as it gets. Astoundingly, though, they have internet access!

Our camp at a Hamer village in South Omo.

We've had the most incredible week passing through the Omo Valley in south-western Ethiopia. This is a piece of Africa that really hasn't changed much in 2,000 years and was always promising to be one of the highlights of the trip. It delivered in all respects, and we've had an amazing experience.

Hamer women in front of Mahali.

It culminated yesterday with a meeting that has been planned for months, but which none of us ever really expected to happen. At 2.50 pm on Wednesday 25th March, ten minutes earlier than expected, the Jangano team met up with Matthew and Alice Owen, under a tree on the Kenyan border. We were told the tree marked the border point and was the main thoroughfare between the two countries, but appropriately enough it appeared to have no vehicle tracks leading to or from it in any direction!

Alice and Amanda, reuniting in the bush!

For the next ten days we'll be travelling down through Turkana and the Chalbi desert with Matthew and Alice. The opportunity of having three strong vehicles and plenty of children to push if we get stuck is too good to pass up, so we'll be doing our utmost to get as lost as we can by avoiding anything that remotely resembles a road. Hopefully we will get to Nairobi by 4th April, but if we fail to make it at the appointed time, you can rest assured that it's not because we're having a miserable time!

Quick update

Hi all

 

This one is very brief, but just to let you know that we're safe and sound, and back in Addis Ababa. Our transit through Sudan was rapid (in view of the delicate situation prevailing at the time), but entirely uneventful. Almost an anticlimax, in fact, given all the news that was pouring out of the country at the time!

 

We're in Addis literally only long enough to collect my sister-in-law, Vicki, from the airport (duly done last night), refuel and then head south. Our next destination, probably the wildest part of our entire trip, is the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia, after which we cross through into Kenya on the shores of Lake Turkana, meet up with Matthew and Alice and wend our way back through the Chalbi Desert to Nairobi. Expected arrival in Nairobi 4th April, which is the same day that a) Jake arrives after completing his first term at baording school in SA and b) Vicki leaves us (there being only one free space in the vehicle!).

 

We don't expect to find too many internet cafes between here and Nairobi, so no panic if you don't hear anything from us. Silence means we're having a blast!!

 

Till next month, then......

 

Gus

 

 

Farewell Egypt

It seems almost impossible to imagine, but somehow our month in Egypt has just about finished. We're back in Aswan, packing up the vehicles, and on Monday we get back on to the ferry that will take us, once more, into Sudan. It will be a very sad moment. Egypt has been special for all of us, in so many different ways, and taking leave will be hard. Although we'll all, no doubt, be back again at some point in our lives, it's hard to imagine when next we'll have the chance to visit it with our own vehicles.

Egypt is not a country that does things by halves, and many of the things we've seen here have been at the extreme edge of the spectrum. Including:

What we wished we'd been driving in the Cairo traffic! (From the El Alamein museum).


1. The traffic. Overlanders the world over describe Cairo traffic in tones of hushed awe, and with complete justification. In most countries, traffic flows (or jams, as the case may be). In Egypt, it doesn't so much flow - more of a kind of roaring, as of a mighty and unstoppable river whose waters cannot be held back by anything man-made. God help you if you try to go in the other direction!

Everything in Egypt is VERY, VERY BIG!

2. The scale. Everything is so vast. Two days ago, we walked in somewhat bewildered fashion around the Karnak Temple, which is just incomprehensibly large. It's not simply "one of the big ones" - it is, quite categorically, the single largest religious structure ever built, anywhere in the world. One of its temples alone could accommodate the cathedrals of St Paul and St Peter, and still have space left over for the Taj Mahal. And there are 16 temples on the one site! As we leant against a 3,000 year old stone column, rising up into the heavens above us, we felt like dwarves standing in the middle of a giant's chess board. It was very humbling.

3. The sense of history. These ancient Egyptians were really something. Their empire may have ebbed and flowed a bit, but the pharoahs stayed basically in charge for nearly 3,000 years. That's five times longer than the Roman empire, ten times longer than the British empire, and several hundred times longer than the Bush empire (thank goodness!). We were impressed when we saw structures built by the Axumite kingdom in Ethiopia that were over 1,500 years old. But when we saw similar structures from Egypt which had been built fully 3,000 years earlier than that, we were overwhelmed.

We've experienced many other extremes, too, not all of which were entirely welcome, but which combined to make Egypt a pretty unique destination. These included:



Finding shelter from the cold anywhere we could. Here, some of the boys are using the cars as windbreaks.....

Some of the coldest nights of the trip, as temperatures in the Western desert dropped to nearly zero, while the wind ripped through our summer sleeping bags and wafer-thin tent walls....

More tourists than we could have possibly imagined. After so many experiences in Sudan where we were the only visitors, it was a shock to arrive at the Valley of the Kings to find bus after bus after bus disgorging its load of package tourists from the the former Soviet republics. At times were completely silenced by the sight, and even little Max (not known for his sensitivity and tact) felt compelled to ask me "Daddy, why are there so many fat people in the world?". I was, I must admit, temporarily at a loss for words!

Bureaucratic befuddlement on an epic scale. Everywhere we went we had to submit names, ages and passport numbers to a selection of bemused public officials, none of whom appeared to have any idea as to why they were collecting his info, but who nevertheless knew it was their job to do so. Tourism is a big earner for Egypt, and they treat tourists with what they would probably consider to be extraordinary levels of care and attention, but what to the rest of us appears to be little short of harrassment. In one desert oasis we were tailed by a carload of armed policemen who were, genuinely, trying to be helpful but whose presence was so ridiculously irksome we were tempted to lead them on a merry goose chase far out into the middle of the desert. They would certainly have followed us!

We are very sad indeed to be leaving this all behind. The rest of Africa will, I fear, seem so mundane and banal by comparison. But still, I'm sure there'll be ways to liven it up!

Plans from here include a rather hasty transit through Sudan (whose President was this week indicted by the ICC in the Hague, and who therefore has something of a grudge against the rest of the world right now - a grudge we sincerely hope he won't take out on us!), and thence down into the south western corner of Ethiopia for what will undoubtedly be another of the trip's highlights, the wild and woolly Omo Valley.

Till the next one, then.

Gus

Sandstorms and Pyramids in Cairo

Here we are in the biggest city in Africa, home to the world's worst drivers, last surviving wonder of the ancient world, biggest souq and, for the last week, temporary home for the Jangano 2009 team. It's been fantastic! I haven't written anything yet, as I've been waiting for the iconic shot of us in front of the pyramids. Needless to say, when we did finally get to the pyramids (yesterday), there was a howling gale with sand whipping around us and minimal visibility. So the iconic shots didn't turn out to be quite as iconic as planned, but hey. Here's one of Max and Ben walking like Egyptians, just to prove we were there.




Much to say about Cairo but, as we only have a few short hours left before we take our leave, not much time in which to say it. It's been everything we expected and hoped for and more. We've got hopelessly lost driving around the warrens of downtown, been scared witless by the antics of the drivers (a particular highlight was when, driving along a three-lane highway at 100kmh, we saw the cars on either side of us simultaneously screech to a halt and reverse back to catch an offramp they had passed!), been thoroughly intimidated by the thronging crowds in the market and been completely awed by the splendours of Tutenkhamun's tomb in the Cairo museum. Yesterday Robert and I walked around what appears to be the biggest supermarket in Africa and were hushed (in the way only Zimbos can be) by the array of goods on offer.

I'll provide more detail shortly, I promise. But as for now, we're off today to Alexandria, and then tomorrow will log our furthest north point at El Alamein before we turn our vehicles southwards for the first time and start the long haul home. Our route will take us through the desert for a 10 day jaunt, following the footsteps of David Stirling and the LRDG, and then we'll emerge at Luxor for what we confidently believe will be the highlight of our time in Egypt - the Valley of the Kings.

Can't dally further - I feel the call of the Western Desert!

Egypt!

Well folks, we're in Aswan. Meaning we've made it to Egypt. Our sense of achievement is only slightly diminished by the fact that our vehicles haven't, but hey, that's minor a detail. The point is, we left Zim to drive up to Egypt and now here we are!

Our vehicles were last seen three days ago on a ferry docked at Wadi Halfa in Sudan. Despite multiple assurances to the contrary, we have strong reason to believe they're still there. As it takes two days for the ferry to cross Lake Nasser from Sudan to Egypt, and as it takes another two days for the ferry to be unloaded and our vehicle documents to be cleared once they've arrived, and as they haven't even started the journey yet, it looks as if we're going to be in Aswan for a while longer.

In itself, this is no hardship. We've had a magnificent trip up through Sudan, but we're ready for some down time and Aswan is as good a place as any for it.

Sudan was incredible. We left Khartoum on Tuesday 27th. Within minutes of leaving the city we were firmly and uncompromisingly back in the desert, and within a few hours we were at our first pyramid site, much to everyone's excitement.

Sudan's pyramids are quite different to the ones we'll see in Egypt. Not only in size and shape, but in the complete absence of any form of tourists. We were able to walk around 3,000 year old ruins without a soul in sight. It was extraordinary, and really gave us the feeling that we were the first to discover them (further aided by the fact that many of them are half buried in the sand). The kids were totally absorbed by it, and we spent many happy hours in Sudan wandering around ancient ruins imagining the great things that must once have happened there.

From Khartoum we had 8 days of travelling up to the Sudan-Egypt border. Although we were on tar roads for far more of this than expected, we still had our fair share of desert driving, and we slept out every night under the stars in the desert. On one day we decided to abandon the road altogether and struck out cross-country, following a bearing on the GPS to our next destination, 120 kms away. It was awesome, and I would happily have driven like that for every day of the trip. On several occasions we got stuck in deep sand and had to get out our sand ladders and dig the cars out, which is an excellent way to get everyone working together as a team!

By the time we reached Wadi Halfa the dust had permeated every pore, and we were grateful to be invited by a Sudanese family into their home for the night (another example of the legendary Sudanese hospitality). This was a real experience for us all, and very humbling in its own way. I'd like to think we'd be that hospitable in the same circumstances, but it takes courage and dedication to invite eight complete strangers into your house!

On Wednesday 4th Feb we finally bid farewell to Sudan and boarded the ferry to Aswan. Another useful cross-cultural experience, mixing in with several hundred Sudanese and Egyptian travellers, and at times it felt as if the conditions were little different from those of a sailing boat 200, 500 or even 1,000 years ago. The passing of time is measured on a different scale in the desert.....

So now we're regrouping in Aswan, waiting for the vehicles and looking forward to the run into Cairo next week. We'll be in Egpyt for a full month, so we've plenty of time here. We want to go to the Sinai and see some of the mountains there (including Mt Sinai, where the 10 commandments were originally handed to Moses), and then over to El Alamein for a bit of military history. Then we'll turn back south via the Western Desert. Oh yes, and let's not forget the pyramids....

More soon, I hope. News should be a bit more frequent, now we're in Egypt and the telecoms are a bit better. Tomorrow, remarkably, marks 7 weeks since we left!

Khartoum

Hi all

Well, we've left the cool mountains of Ethiopia and are now in the heat and hurly-burly of Khartoum, well and truly into the zone of Arab Africa. And what a different world it is.

We crossed over into Sudan from Gonder on Thursday. The road to the border on the Ethiopian side was atrocious and cost me one flat tyre (our first in 8,000 kms) and one fancy rear shock absorber (which must have been hit by a stone and subsequently lost all its gas). As soon as we crossed over to the Sudanese side, we were on tar, much to our pleasant surprise.

One of many pleasant surprises Sudan had in store for us that day, as it turned out. We were expecting the people to be friendly (it's the one thing every traveller tells you about Sudan), but we were still taken aback by the extent of their hospitable welcoming. Everywhere we looked we were greeted by warm, friendly smiles, bereft of the begging hands we'd become used to in Ethiopia.

That night we camped wild, our first night in the desert and a special landmark for all of us. It was also a relief just to be camping again, after so much time in hotels (camping wild not being much of an option in Ethiopia, simply because of the numbers of people everywhere).

The next day we made it all the way through to Khartoum where, once again, we've been the recipient of amazing hospitality from our friends, Sean and Amy Hughes.

Just as well, because we've had to deal with some serious bureaucracy. Driving in from the border we had to stop at every town we passed through to have our passport details entered into a register. Once we got here, we then had to go and register at the Department of Aliens (visions of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones!). And now, before we leave Khartoum for the northern desert, we have to secure travel permits from whichever government department it is that issues travel permits. By the time we've figured that out, our 14 day visas will just about have expired.

 A wonderful moment today when we met our tour guide contact for help with securing the permits (we're hoping to cross into Egypt via the land border with Sudan). Having already admitted that there wasn't much in the way of tourists in Sudan, he then confessed that in his two years as a tour guide, the sum total of groups he had guided was…..four! Not exactly a booming growth area, then!

We're in Khartoum for one more day, servicing vehicles etc, and then we head north towards Egypt. It's an utterly new experience for all of us, and we're enjoying every moment of it!

More from Egypt.....

Gus

 

Ethiopia

Greetings from Ethiopia. What an incredible country this is! We've visited the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela (800 years old - see the photo), seen the relicts of the ancient civilisation at Aksum (2,000 years old!) and wandered through the magnificent castles and palaces of Gonder that were built in the 17th and 18th century and rival anything in Europe for their opulence and splendour. Anyone who thinks Africa is backwards clearly hasn't seen Ethiopia. When Europe was in the Dark Ages, Ethiopia was one of the most advanced civilisations in the world.

 

Although some things have been very familiar to us Zimbos. Frequent power cuts, periodic fuel shortages and horrendously slow internet connections. Just to make us feel at home!

 

Thankfully the kids have enjoyed it. The long dark passageways carved into the rock, the caves, the paintings, the gold and silver crosses, the mummified bodies and (best of all) the fabulous tales of the secret hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant, have been enough to command the attention of even the youngest in our team (Max, aged 6). Yesterday they had their annual Timkat ceremony, when they take a box purportedly carrying the Ark of the Covenant out from its hiding place and parade it around town. We were there to see it, and we were duly impressed (see the attached photo).

 

Sadly we've lost Jake in the last few days. He flew down to South Africa to start his new boarding school there, and we were all mightily sorry to see him go. Monday was his first day of classes. Naturally we've heard nothing from him, but we're quietly confident he'll be fine. He's certainly the only one to have started the trip to school from an airport (Lalibela) at 2,600 metres above sea level!

 

From here we move on to Sudan on Thursday (would that be the 22^nd January?!). We'll be sad to leave Ethiopia, but mollified by the knowledge that we get a second crack at it again in March. Meanwhile, as there's no alcohol in Sudan whatsoever, we shall be drinking more than our usual quantities of beer tonight in preparation!

 

More soon!

 

Gus

 

Poles Apart

Well, we've made it from Nairobi, and here we now in what could
rightfully be called the capital of Africa, Addis Ababa. It's been an
incredible stint. We crossed the equator at Nanyuki, on the slopes of
Mount Kenya, dropped down into the wild bush of northern Kenya,
running the gamut of bandits along the fabled Moyale road, and then
climbed back up into the highlands of Ethiopia. Too much to recount in
a single blog entry, but I though I'd give you a taster by recounting
a single day that illustrates the astonishing contrasts of this part
of the world.

It was Sunday 4th January, and we woke up at Lake Paradise, a crater
lake inside Marsabit National Park, and one of my all time favourite
places. Marsabit is a mountain that rises out of the desert in
northern Kenya. While all around it is flat, dry scrub, Marsabit rises
high enough (over 2,400 metres) to create its own micro-climate, and
is shrouded in luscious cloud forest, full of elephants and buffaloes.

Despite not having to make an early start, were still up at sunrise.
The dawn was just too beautiful to miss. After a relaxed morning
enjoying this incredible venue and catching up on diaries, homework
and some long overdue tree-climbing escapades, we packed up for the
stint across the Chalbi Desert up to the Ethiopian border.

Within half an hour of leaving Marsabit we were back down to below 600
metres (we camped at 1700 metres) and in the midst of wild desert.
Although I've been to plenty of deserts before (and the Kalahari and
the Namib both count as some of my favourites), there's something very
special about the Chalbi. Not only are the roads absolutely
bone-crunchingly abysmal, but the scenery is punctuated by these
sudden volcanic mountain ranges rising up from the flat, flat desert.
Add to that the extraordinarily colourful people that you encounter in
the middle of nowhere (from fully clad Samburu warriors to the camel
trains of Ethiopian Borana), and the ever-present threat of Shifta
(Somali bandits that have been the bane of travellers in this area for
as long as anyone remembers), and you see why traversing this desert
stimulates the senses in a way that few others do.

Mid afternoon we stop for a photo opportunity. The cars have been
shaken as hard at it is possible to shake a vehicle and so far have
withstood everything we've thrown at them. But when we come to move
off, Mahali, our vehicle, won't restart. It's obviously a wire
somewhere that has been shaken loose. If we can find it and reconnect
it, all will be fine. But there are a lot of wires in a Land Cruiser,
so it might take some time. With one eye firmly fixed on the horizon
for Shifta, Robert and I roll up our sleeves and start the
examination.

After a few minutes, we're beginning to fear a problem with the
starter motor. Ordinarily this wouldn't be too serious, but Mahali is
an automatic and you can't push start her, so this will require us to
remove and replace the starter motor in the middle of the Chalbi
desert. Not everyone's idea of a good time (although secretly I'm
getting somewhat excited at the prospect of working through the night
while the kids keep watch and the mums keep the coffee flowing!).
Fortunately for everyone, I finally find the loose wire just as we're
about to start disassembling the starter. By 4pm we're back on the
move.

The next settlement we reach has a police post where the cops run a
profitable business selling armed escort services to passing
travellers. What they do is tell you horror stories of Shifta attacks
(in our case it was a Land Cruiser just like ours that had supposedly
been attacked the previous week, and the driver killed and his
passengers left stranded in the middle of the desert), and then offer
to provide an armed escort for a fee. When you have a mother and
children in the car, it takes considerable willpower to turn this
down! But, knowing this to be a fictional story, we did.

Nevertheless, as we drove the subsequent stretch, there were a few
nervous moments. A wandering nomad materialised from out of the bush
just in front of us at one point, clutching what appeared to be an
AK47 in his hand, and I was convinced we were about to be ambushed.
Drawing level with him I saw it was in fact an axe, not an AK, and
breathed a furtive sigh of relief, hoping Mands hadn't noticed me
flinching. She was too busy telling the kids a story, though, so I
got away with it!

As the sun started to set, we pulled into an isolated Catholic mission
station on the Ethiopian border, and sought refuge in the grounds of
the hospital. With characteristic generosity the hospital
administrator offered us his own personal garden as a site for our
tents. This is bandit country, and no-one questions the need to find a
safe place for the night. The last thing we hear, just as we drift off
to sleep, is a hyena outside the confines of the mission.

From here we're off up to the rock churches of Lalibela in northern
Ethiopia. On Monday we collect our visas for Sudan, too, which opens
up the way for the next leg, and then on Saturday we bid a sad
farewell to Jake, who flies down to South Africa to start his boarding
school. His departure signals an end to the holiday and the start of
"normal" life as a family on the road in Africa. That means schooling
for the kids during the day and homework at night. Universal groans
all round!

Not sure when we'll next get to an internet connection. Probably
Khartoum around the 24th of Jan. Till then, then……